Possible Tell Yeast Starters Apart?

So, I was preparing yeast starters for a hefe weizen and a kolsch in identical beakers -- and got distracted by my kids in the end as I pitched Wyeast packets into the beakers -- and put them down near each other before I labeled the beakers.

So, when I got back to the beakers, I was about 90% sure I knew which yeast was in each beaker, but not 100%. Anyone know a way to determine which yeast is which? Not sure if they'll each give off any different smells at this stage to tell them apart. FYI, I had to sub in an American Wheat yeast for the kolsch and I used a bavarian wheat yeast for the hefe.

I totally feel dumb sending this in, but hey. It's not quite as easy to do brew things with kids around!

At first I thought this was easy, since you said Kolsch starter vs. Hefe starter. I figured just taste it, hefeweizen yeast has a very distinctive taste. But since you are actually looking for some difference between American Wheat and Bavarian Wheat, I can't help. Sorry.

Well, thanks for responding. I figured it would be a tall order. Maybe someone else will think of something.

well, it should be done fermenting rather quickly, whichever one starts clearing first is probably the kolsch/american wheat as bavarian wheat yeasts are ultra-low flocculators. Also, you could smell it - bavarian is pretty distinctive. An american wheat is a more clean fermenting yeast than the bavarian. This would be a really fun brewing game for a homebrew club to do.

If you smell a lot of banana, thats the bavarian strain. It should be very distinctive, give it a whif. The american wheat may have some of that.... but you will smell an overwhelming banana smell with the hefe strain if you let it go for a couple hours.

Yeah, I was wondering if the bavarian would already have the banana aroma. I'll give it a shot and see if I can tell. Thanks, everyone!

I just did the smell test and, wow, you were right. Bavarian already has the distinctive banana smell (and I had guessed right, initially). Thanks again!